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Elton John songs? For a musical? Groundbreaking. Vanessa Williams is really giving fans a glimpse into the pop icon’s new tunes for her new musical based on The Devil Wears Prada.
During her appearance on the Wednesday (July 10) episode of The Kelly Clarkson Show, the “Save the Best for Last” singer shared some details about working with the pop legend for the show, which began its off-West End run in Plymouth, England, on July 6.
“I am honored because I grew up listening to Elton John on my little transistor radio on my windowsill with my two antennae, listening to ‘Bennie and the Jets’ and [‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’],” she said. “That’s my childhood! So, to be able to work with him and have him write new songs that I get the chance to sing for him is pretty epic.”
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In the show, Williams plays the titular role of Miranda Priestly, the icy, high-powered editor-in-chief at the fashion magazine Runway. In discussing her performance in the show, the actress gave Clarkson and her audience a tease of one of the show’s pivotal numbers.
“The script is very much based on the movie, so you see all the aspects of that, but it’s amplified by the music. So, for instance, in the second act they’re doing their fashion show and everyone thinks [Miranda] is on the outs,” she explained, before launching into an a capella rendition of the song. “‘You think that I can’t see you/ Smugly sitting there with glee/ Eager for the ending you’ve been waiting years to see/ Today, she’s getting ousted/ Yet her final hour’s nigh/ ‘Miranda’s reign has run its course’/ That’s what you think? Oh my.’”
Williams also shared that thanks to John’s musical sensibilities, the songs immediately lend themselves to broader cultural appeal. “This music takes the transition from the words and brings it to musical theater — but it’s also pop, too, because that’s Elton’s background,” she said. “So, there’s going to be remixes on the radio from The Devil Wears Prada, because he know what works in both genres.”
Check out the clip of Williams’ interview on The Kelly Clarkson Show below:
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Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo are hoping their stage musical, Invincible, will prove to be just that as they continue to work on it — amidst several other projects the couple has going, both together and separately.
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The production, an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet built around the pair’s songs from Benatar’s albums, debuted to mixed reviews during late 2022 at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills, Calif. — not long after Benatar and Giraldo were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Now they’re planning to bring it to New York this fall — not in performance, but to make what they say will be significant changes before bringing it back to the boards.
“The place we’re at right now is about tearing it to shreds and starting over,” Benatar tells Billboard. “We have the liberty to do that because we haven’t gone to even off-Broadway or anything like that. So we’re tearing it apart, doing a similar show but with a lot of different elements to it.”
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Giraldo predicts that the next incarnation of Invincible — which includes such Benatar favorites as “Hell Is For Children,” “Love Is a Battlefield,” “Heartbreaker,” “We Belong” and, of course, the title song — will be “different and the same at the same time. It will take it in a little different direction, maybe go back to the very beginning. I think we got too far in the weeds with it and it started getting a little messy. So maybe we’ll be going back to breaking the rules a little bit, trying to be brave.”
Benatar says the greatest lesson came in the way the duo’s songs were adapted within the original version of the show. “The goal for the production we did was to do a hybrid of taking our music and reinventing it into a more theatrical form,” she explains. “Some of the songs didn’t really work like that. Some of them can be augmented; ‘We Live For Love,’ for example, ‘We Belong,’ things like that work well in a theatrical form. But we learned that some of the arrangements that are on the original (recordings) are very exciting and actually work better (in the musical) if we keep them closer to the original. That was kind of a surprise, and a big lesson to learn. But that’s something you can’t learn until you put it in front of human beings to see it.”
Neither is discouraged by the need to reboot, however. “It was a learning experience for us,” Giraldo acknowledges. “We made mistakes. We learned great things along the way. It’s a different kind of (endeavor) to be sure.” Benatar, meanwhile, affirms that “it’s been exciting. It’s been fun. You just keep evolving ’til we get to the place we feel like it’s time to put it out there.” They’re not saying when that might be, but she has a where in mind — Cleveland, which is Giraldo’s hometown.
“We love it there,” Benatar says. “It’s a home kind of thing, as good as New York to us as a family place. It’s always fun to go there; the audiences are amazing, really receptive. So that’s possibly the first place to open in this (next) form.”
The revived Invincible is just one project Benatar and Giraldo – who return to the road Saturday, July 6, In Atlantic City with dates booked through mid-August — have targeted for the near future.
Next year will also see the release of a children’s book the two are writing and composing companion songs for. They’re keeping details, including the title and publication date, under wraps for now, but it’s inspired by the relationships they have with their three grandchildren, two girls and a boy. “It’s about everything we do and everything they do…and it’s about music,” Benatar says. “It’s sweet.”
On his own, meanwhile, Giraldo is continuing work on two long-gestating endeavors — a memoir and an all-star holiday album he’s been working on with some of his musical friends. He’s also recording an album with former Benatar band drummer Myron Grombacher, a friends from his early days in Cleveland and in Rick Derringer’s band. The guitarist says the two plan to reconvene after he and Benatar tour this summer, working as just the two of them, but they’re open “to have some guest people on board” if it feels appropriate. “We’ve got about 21 songs,” Giraldo reports. “We were childhood friends, so this is what we do — just make music, have a great time playing and do the best you can.”
It’s been a minute since Benatar and Giraldo have released new music of their own as well. Their last full album was Go in 2003, while there have been some one-off singles and soundtrack contributions between 2015-2020 — most recently “Together.” They also joined Dolly Parton for her version of “Heartbreaker” from last year’s Rockstar album.
“That’s a possibility, if the time feels right,” Giraldo says. “It’s not like we don’t have a lot of material. We do have a lot of songs. Here’s the deal…the best records, I believe, are done in 29 days; you just get in there, do it and get done. You have to be able to block that time out so your primary focus is on that recording. That is the most difficult part. As you get older…it’s hard to find that block.”
Benatar, however, sounds ready for it. “We have about 125 songs around, waiting to be recorded,” she says, laughing as she adds, “If you can get my husband in there to do it, please be my guest.”
When Will Brill got home after winning his first Tony award, he was a little, well….spooked. “I was in bed and somebody texted me like, ‘How are you feeling?’” Brill recalls. “And I was suddenly hit with like, There’s a Tony in this house. It can’t be seen. It is lurking! So weird.”
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A week after winning best featured actor in a play for his performance in Stereophonic, Brill admits it still “feels a little weird.” His portrayal of Reg – the hilarious, endearing, and often frighteningly coke-and-booze-addled bass player in Stereophonic’s fictional 1970s rock band on the verge of mega stardom – made Brill the only cast member from the most-Tony-nominated-ever play to bring home hardware. But on Tony night, Brill made sure to give his full cast its due: in his delightfully off-the-cuff acceptance speech, he asked all his castmates to stand up for an ovation (he also, memorably, thanked his therapist).
Like his fellow Stereophonic cast members, Brill wasn’t an experienced, trained musician before joining the ensemble. But acquiring the skill to convincingly play one onstage (and perform the play’s Tony-nominated score by Will Butler there) was the kind of deep-dive experience Brill has long relished as an actor: His wide-ranging roles have included Dr. Astrov, in the hyper-intimate off-Broadway production of Uncle Vanya that took place in a private New York loft last year, as well as Roy Cohn in Showtime’s miniseries Fellow Travelers, and the peddler Ali Hakim in the 2019 Broadway reimagining of Oklahoma!.
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As Stereophonic continues its run on Broadway through Jan. 5, 2025, Brill spoke to Billboard about adding Reg to that list, as well as about his action-packed Tony night.
Have you started to come to terms with cohabitating with your Tony?Sort of… I mean, people keep like asking, “Where are you going to put it?” I don’t know…. wherever it…looks good? Wherever it fits? Like, I had to put my bike in this one corner because that’s where it fit. I don’t have a lot of art in my house, and now I have this thing I’m like, obligated to display.
You have to put it somewhere unexpected, like the bathroom.
Totally. My idea, which I believe is a step too far, was to put it in the toilet. So it’s really a surprise to anybody who is using the bathroom. I have a buddy who keeps his in the fridge. And I heard that Ian McKellen keeps his many awards on his roof so that they can “rest.” I don’t know what that means, but that’s allegedly what he does.
Before we discuss anything else, I need the story of your ensemble for Tonys night: the pleats, the jewelry… it was a look!
I was working with a stylist, Savannah White, and we had bounced around a lot of ideas of stores and designers and we were largely on the same page: Vivienne Westwood, Thom Browne, Commes des Garcons, and Issey Miyake, who I didn’t really know of until he passed. I just saw an article about him and started Googling him and was really moved by his aesthetic.
So then Savannah came back with the two looks [of Miyake’s] that I wound up wearing. I was like, “Oh my God, this is so unlike anything I’ve seen, and I have to imagine it’s going to be totally unlike what anybody else is going to be wearing.” I wanted to be wearing something that wasn’t following a gender binary, and I feel like Issey’s stuff hangs on any human body beautifully. I felt really lucky that we sort of nailed it. Everything was sort of flowy and weird and off-kilter — and few straight lines except for the pleats themselves. It was really a fun fit.
Will Brill accepts the Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Play award for Stereophonic onstage during The 77th Annual Tony Awards at David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center on June 16, 2024 in New York City.
Theo Wargo/Getty Images
Your speech was iconic, to say the least. When you thanked your therapist, it became one of the most-memed moments of the night. How did you hear about that?
My PR person came up to me and was like, “The internet loved your speech.” And I was like, “Oh, that’s so nice. I just assumed that it was like, either the internet loves your speech or hates your speech — I had no idea that me shouting out my therapist was going to be any kind of a big deal or that shouting out the rest of my cast, for that matter, was going to be a big deal too. But they both sort of showed up everywhere. I got a really sweet text from my therapist that at first was all caps, “HOLY S–T, YOU WON! F–K YEAH!” And then, two minutes later, “Oh my God Will, this is so sweet,” which really made me happy.
You also gave a shoutout to your bass teacher. What was the process of learning the instrument like for you? You really get the physicality and personality of a bass player down, as well as the technical aspects, which seems uniquely challenging.
It was really important for me to look authentic. I had experience learning an instrument for a [project] before — I learned to play 12 songs on the guitar for this David Chase film Not Fade Away, and that’s actually where I met Robbie Mangano, who was in The Grandmothers of Invention and is an astonishing guitar and bass player. He taught me and Jack Huston how to play guitar for the movie.
But it was a different thing; we really just needed to look like we were playing the songs, which were pre-recorded by essentially the E Street Band. We didn’t actually have to play for sound, we just had to look like we knew what we were doing, and there were all sorts of ways to cut around the fact that we didn’t know what we were doing.
So for this show, I called Robbie to help me learn the bass. But Robbie was also weirdly at the intersection of my life where I started to think about sobriety, which is like another huge part of Reg. I got really drunk at a show of Robbie’s, and he wrote me this two-page letter, where he was like, “I’ve seen too many talented people not have the life that they should because they got caught up with drugs and alcohol, and I really believe in you and I count you as a friend and I hope that that would not be something that happened to you.”
At the time I couldn’t hear it, and I actually wound up not talking to him for several years because I was so embarrassed. Years and years later, I got a divorce and then I got sober and then [Stereophonic] came back around. So by the time I called Robbie to start learning the bass again, I was two years sober and got to tell him that he was a big part of that. And he wound up saying to me, “Wow, that’s crazy. I am recently sober too.” It was really crazy and moving. So he’s been a very special touchstone in my life.
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Great bass players especially seem to have this innate comfort in your own skin. Was that natural for you to achieve or more of a journey?
It was a journey, for sure. But what was cool was, when I was a little kid, I thought I was going to be a magician. I would practice card tricks alone in my room for literally 12 hours a day. I didn’t pursue magic because it was too scary to perform in front of people these things that required incredible dexterity. But when I started learning the bass, it triggered this long dormant part of my brain, which was like the joy of doing something dexterous 1000 times alone in your bedroom and losing sleep over it and trying to perfect this one thing and getting closer and closer. So I really felt like I was practicing magic again.
You and your castmates opened for Will Butler at his own actual album release show just a few weeks after previews for Stereophonic started. What was that like?
It was insane. A lot of people took videos with their phones and sent them to me afterward, and I was so embarrassed at how stiff and terrible I was that I was like, “Okay, you don’t have to just get good at the bass, you have to look amazing, you have to be able to dance and play the bass at the same time.” It still never feels like it’s easy, but it’s cool to have audiences come now and say that it looks like it’s easy, because that’s sort of the goal.
From left: Tom Pecinka, Will Brill and Sarah Pidgeon in Stereophonic.
Julieta Cervantes
Were there particular bass players who were models for your portrayal of Reg?
I definitely watched videos of John McVie playing. Will Butler is the only frontman I can think of off the top of my head who also plays bass, and he is so dance-y in his shows — he’s so free, he’s a true wild man on stage, and he was really a big source of inspiration.
I went to see Muna recently, and the band that opened for them [Nova Twins], it was these two British girls playing kind of hardcore music and dressed up sort of like punk-style Raggedy Ann. The bassist would jump around and run around the stage, and I remember thinking like, “I want to get close to that and I want to have that freedom of movement.” Other than that, learning the instrument was so hard and learning the play was so hard that there was not really a lot of room outside your imagination to do extra research.
This seems like such a lightning in a bottle kind of experience for all of you. Has it in any fundamental ways changed what you want from the work you do going forward?
Yeah, for sure — but I think every role I play, to a certain extent, is a reassessment of what I want to do going forward. The ultimate thing that I love about performing and exploring characters is exploring the different the levels of myself that I don’t know completely or understand and by extrapolation exploring the human condition more and more deeply.
I was just talking about this in therapy today, actually. Like, I’m constantly straddling a line: Am I doing justice to myself and the role that I’m playing by putting in an amount of effort that actually does meaningful excavation for myself and for the people coming? Or should I be resting a little bit more, and can the process be easier and more joyful?
I would say the peddler in Oklahoma! was a more joyful than difficult experience for me; probably A Case For The Existence of God was too and probably Fellow Travelers was a little more joyful than it was difficult. And then Uncle Vanya and this have both really ridden on the cusp of joy and difficulty. They have been the most challenging experiences of my life, but also deeply, deeply gratifying.
Devonté Hynes is well-known as a musical collaborator, songwriter and producer who’s worked with a diverse and ever-expanding group of artists (Solange, Mariah Carey, Harry Styles and Carly Rae Jepsen, to name a few) and a composer for film, television, dance and classical ensembles. Now, Billboard can exclusively reveal that the artist also known as […]
In a community of multitaskers, Shaina Taub is still most likely one of the busiest people on Broadway. Taub wrote the music, lyrics and book for Suffs, her musical bringing the women who fomented the women’s suffrage movement vividly back to life and firmly out of the history books to which they’ve long been relegated; she’s also one of the show’s stars, playing the central role of movement instigator Alice Paul.
At last week’s Tony Awards, Taub took home the prizes for both original score and book of a musical, and gave a moving televised speech calling out some of the pioneering women who paved the way for her – including both fellow composers and one of her lead producers, Sec. Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Shaina Taub as Alice Paul in Suffs.
Joan Marcus
Sitting in her dressing room a little over an hour from showtime on a recent night, the 35-year old Taub is clearly still absorbing her wins, though she admits that the ongoing routine of performing onstage each night has helped keep her grounded. “To have the tangible act of doing the show,” she says, “brings me back to reality in a beautiful way.” (The show’s original Broadway cast recording is currently out on Atlantic Records).
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Below, she speaks to Billboard about Suffs’ long road to Broadway (including its run at New York’s Public Theater in spring of 2022), the status of her next project – writing the lyrics for Elton John’s music in the The Devil Wears Prada musical (set to open at London’s Dominion theater in July prior to a West End transfer in October) – and more.
The world of theater often feels like a more progressive one than TV or film — but as you pointed out in your acceptance speech it’s still a fairly small group of women composers who are getting recognition of this level. What’s been your experience?
I’ve been so blessed to have been taught well for so long by so many brilliant women. Elizabeth Swados — who’s a legend of theater, composer, educator — I got to be in her class [at NYU], and she was the first person who pushed me off the cliff to write a song before that was something I thought I could even do. And Jeanine [Tesori] especially is just a titan of composing in our field for any gender. She’s been so generous — she just let me come and play crappy first drafts, and gave me essential devastating feedback, tough love and real-talk in moments when I’ve had questions about the business and about the craft. Georgia Stitt too, who put together Maestra, which is such an amazing community for women and non-binary folks making theater. Kristen Anderson-Lopez has been so kind.
A lot has been made this season of me being the second woman to write and star in a musical but the first one is Micki Grant, an incredible artist I sadly never got to meet whose legacy should be given a lot more attention. We’ve always been here, and so many women are my peers on Broadway right now: Rebekah Greer Melocik is a good friend, and her work for How to Dance in Ohio was so gorgeous; Kate Kerrigan with The Great Gatsby, she and I have come up together; Bekah [Brunstetter] and Ingrid [Michaelson] for The Notebook. Anais Mitchell – whose Hadestown I was in off-Broadway — we’re both Vermont girls and she’s such a confidante. Everyone is just so forthcoming; it’s a real sisterhood.
You clearly did work on Suffs between the Public and Broadway runs. How did you come to terms with what needed editing? Was there a moment between the runs of reset for you?
There really wasn’t a lot of a moment of reset. There was no back in the saddle – we kinda stayed in the saddle. I had demos of new ideas for songs from May 2022 that are now in the show on Broadway. I knew that it wasn’t finished, and there’s just that intel you get from a first production that you can’t get in a workshop or reading because the audience tells you everything and they tell you fast. It took a lot of willpower to keep going; I’m so proud of what we did downtown, and we had so much love for the show and also a lot of critique of the show. There were times that got me down, but any sense of feeling down pretty quickly transformed into almost this adrenaline, this sense of being underestimated that put me on fire to be like, we’re gonna finish this show, dammit!
From left: Jenn Colella, Kim Blanck, Shaina Taub, Nikki M James and Ally Bonino at Suffs‘ first preview performance.
Jenny Anderson / @jennyandersonphoto
What kind of changes did you know you had to make?
There were two driving principles to my revision. More humanity, less history: just making sure everything was as character- and emotion-forward as possible, with all the historical detail I fell in love with taking a bit more of a backseat. And then I kind of made a promise to myself that I was gonna spend more time sitting at the piano than the computer, trying to let my impulses be visceral, let me pull from my musical heart first and see where that would lead.
Did you always intend to perform in Suffs?
I always wanted to perform in it. I’ve always performed in my work — I find writing and performing feed each other. But I initially thought I’d play Doris, the young intern type character who documents everything. It sort of felt like the Mark in Rent character and I’ve always wanted to play Mark in a gender-flipped Rent. [Laughs.] But Alice was a difficult nut to crack, finding her inner life. She didn’t leave that much of a paper trail in terms of her emotional life.
And it was also about finding Alice’s sense of humor. I got a great note from our orchestrator, Michael Starobin, who came to see me play at Joe’s Pub early last year and was like, “I wish there as more of that girl in Alice – that self-deprecation and humor.” It was such a great note, and I think it helped me make her come alive.
What has Sec. Clinton been like as a producer?
She’s just been such a cheerleader and a warm, supportive presence — how vocal she’s been in her support of us before reviews, nominations, awards, just her vote of confidence in us and that we could see through this thing we started at the Public, that gave me faith in the dark and hard moments of tech and previews and the “Oh boy, we’re gonna go face the music again [on Broadway], what are people gonna say…” Knowing she believed in us so wholeheartedly that she was willing to attach her name and her legacy to this piece of art, that gave me confidence I needed in really vulnerable moments.
Suffs producers Rachel Sussman, Sec. Clinton, and Jill Furman, and co-producer Morgan Steward.
Jenny Anderson / @jennyandersonphoto
Can we please discuss her amazing Tony night caftan? It was definitely one of the biggest stories of the night…
I loved it. She looked gorgeous as always, and she seemed to me to be so liberated. And to see her be so celebrated by the theater community with that standing ovation — it was great to see her given her due. She’s a theater lover, and beyond just being an enthusiast I think she understands the importance of theater to the public discourse. She gets that it matters beyond just entertainment; it’s a public common good that should be funded, that should be championed, and that’s rare in a leader of her stature. New York theater loves HRC!
Have you been juggling Devil Wears Prada work with all this too? Are there lessons you’ve learned in the editing process for Suffs that you’re finding are applicable there?
I mean, that’s another long and winding road — we’re going through a lot of changes, and it’s exciting. I was actually just texting with the creative team right now! I’ve been working on that show for six years, it’s gone through so many permutations, and yet we keep trying to figure it out. It’s such a fundamentally different experience [from Suffs] in that I’m collaborating so much, writing lyrics for a composer who’s worked lyrics-first for his whole 50-plus-years songwriting career. That’s really strengthened me as a songwriter, to write lyrics first and lyrics only. It’s gotten me excited for my projects after this to be a little more in the music seat, after this lyric-honing time.
It’s crazy with theater, you can never plan these things in advance. I never imagined it would be this insane overlapping season, but luckily we got to do a lot of amazing work last year. Elton and I wrote a few new songs, so it’s on its way.
Once again, the annual Broadway Bares charity burlesque benefit show not only raised temperatures, but also raised a bevy of money for a good cause. Over two sold-out shows on June 23 at New York’s Hammerstein Ballroom, more than 200 dancers strutted their stuff and helped generate $2,259,134 for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS (BC/EFA) – […]
“I’m trying to get you hyped and excited,” exclaimed theater director Lileana Blain-Cruz at the Minnesota State Theatre in Minneapolis on Saturday (June 22). “I’m trying to get a motorcycle on stage!”
Hot off directing a visually extravagant, emotionally stirring production of John Adams’ El Niño at the New York Metropolitan Opera (she’s the resident director at Lincoln Center Theater), Blain-Cruz has proven she’s adept at helming massive, complicated productions. But in spring 2025 at the State Theatre, she’s facing an audience even more passionate and exacting than New York City theater critics – Prince fans.
On Saturday, a theater full of the “purple fam” were treated to the first public preview of an upcoming stage musical adaptation of Prince’s Purple Rain film as part of the five-day Celebration 2024 event in the Purple One’s hometown. And with Blain-Cruz – who repeatedly hopped out of her chair and solicited audience feedback while flaunting a flashy purple blazer – directing, it’s clear this stage musical has an advocate who can match the enthusiasm of Jerome Benton hyping up Morris Day during a performance by The Time.
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Joining Blain-Cruz during the preview – a panel discussion that boasted a work-in-progress look at three of the musical’s stage numbers – were book writer Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, fresh off a Tony win for Appropriate; music director Jason Michael Webb, whose credits include the Broadway hit MJ The Musical; and Bobby Z., who drums in The Revolution and recently joined the production as a music adviser alongside fellow Prince associate Morris Hayes. (Tony-winning producer Orin Wolf appeared at the tail-end of the hour-long panel, too.)
“This is not Hamilton,” joked Jacobs-Jenkins, who assured the audience of diehards that his book will draw on the 1984 film’s screenplay (written by Albert Magnoli and William Blinn) without radically reworking it. Even so, he said he intends to further develop the character of Apollonia and make some necessary pacing changes to fit a stage production: “A play is a play, and a movie is a movie.”
While the director is hellbent on getting that motorcycle on stage (she says the image of Prince “staring into her soul” on the Purple Rain bike is one of her earliest memories of the genius), she acknowledges some limitations of the medium. “I can’t get a Lake Minnetonka that isn’t actually Lake Minnetonka on stage,” she jested, while still promising to bring the “epic” nature of a Met Opera production “to something as sublime as Purple Rain.”
“It is an opera — it’s a tragedy and a triumph,” agreed Bobby Z. “I got to see Prince build a revolution from 1977 to the Parade album [in 1986].” Similar to many operas that have stood the test of time, Purple Rain comes complete with an unforgettable villain – Morris Day, Prince’s real-life friend and colleague who played a deliciously narcissistic version of himself in the 1984 film. For the world’s first musical preview of the Purple Rain musical, attendees of Celebration 2024 got to see performers portraying Day and Benton preen and camp it up in character before playing a solidly grooving version of The Time’s “Jungle Love” and “777-9311.” (Morris Day himself hit that same stage later on Saturday to perform an assortment of The Time classics and bust out some dance moves.)
“There only so many of these Black icons that we have,” mused Webb. “Working with the Michael [Jackson] legacy prepared me for the one I really wanted — which is this one.”
Explaining that he was looking to present some of the songs through a different lens, the multi-talented Webb brought out a performer (introduced only as Rachel) to portray Apollonia and duet with him on “Take Me With U.” The song is bombastic and string-drenched on the album, but this teaser version – which started out in an elegant, stripped-down vein before working up to a full-band sound – demonstrated that these songs can soar in a variety of stylings (something hardcore Prince fans already well know).
Acknowledging that the soundtrack’s nine songs are not enough material for a Broadway musical, they also revealed that the Purple Rain stage musical will draw on Prince’s full catalog, including songs that didn’t even appear in the film. Case in point: Before the event wrapped, the Apollonia performer returned to the stage with two others to perform “The Glamorous Life” as Vanity 6. While that Prince-penned song is certainly well-suited to the time period – it came out in 1984 and reached the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 that fall – it’s not a Vanity 6 number at all, but rather a hit performed by Sheila E.
But why not take some creative liberties? The team behind this production is openly gunning for a Broadway run after debuting Purple Rain in Minneapolis, so the bar is high. As long as the songs are a sonic and thematic match for the realm of Purple Rain, who cares whether a tune appeared in the film? Broadway is a tough market, and success is far from guaranteed for musicals based on the works of pop hitmakers (though that isn’t stopping plenty of artists from trying). Prince’s rich, rewarding catalog deserves a wide audience, so it only makes sense for the team behind this production to put their best high-heeled boot forward as they reimagine his magnum opus for the stage.
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The 2024 Tony Awards took place on Sunday (June 16), and the musical category was stacked with productions beloved by fans and critics.
Hell’s Kitchen, Water for Elephants, Illinoise, The Outsiders and Suffs were some of the award-winning and nominated musicals at the 77th annual Tony Awards. (Missed the show? Here’s how to watch this year’s Tony Awards for free.)
With the weather getting nicer on the East Coast and summer travel heating up, it’s a great time to start planning to see one of this year’s Tony-winning and nominated musicals on Broadway.
Tickets to musicals and other productions can be purchased at sites such as Broadway.com and Telecharge, in addition to TodaysTix, StubHub and Vivid Seats, but we rounded up other ticketing sites to utilize too. Ticket prices range from around $60 and up, but prices for some of the popular shows (Hell’s Kitchen included) can range from upwards of $100 to $300, depending on demand.
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Keep reading for a breakdown of each of the best musical nominees for 2024, and a couple of other buzzing musicals, and places to buy tickets.
Hell’s Kitchen
Leading the pack as the most Tony Award-nominated show of the year, Alicia Key’s Hell’s Kitchen took home two Tony Awards on Sunday (best performance by an actress in a leading role for Maleah Joi Moon and best performance in a featured role for Kecia Lewis).
Featuring music from Keys, Hell’s Kitchen is a coming-of-age story centered around a 17-year-old teen who lives in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen and dreams of blazing a path through music. The cast includes Shoshana Bean, Brandon Victor Dixon, Lewis, Chris Lee and Moon.
‘Hell’s Kitchen’ Tickets
Illinoise
The 2024 Tony Award winner for best choreography, Illinoise is based on the Sufjan Steven’s 2005 album of the same name and features “a group of friends gather around a campfire, sharing stories of first love, grief, and growing up in this new musical.” The musical was created by Tony nominee Justin Peck and Pulitzer Prize winner Jackie Sibblies Drury.
‘Illinoise’ Tickets
Water for Elephants
Based on the New York Times bestselling novel, Water for Elephants is a Great Depression-era story about a man who steps onto a new life path after jumping in front of a moving train and subsequently joining a traveling circus.
‘Water for Elephants’ Tickets
The Outsiders
A stage adaptation of the S.E. Hinton novel , The Outsiders follows the story of Ponyboy Curtis, a 14-year-old orphan. The musical explores classism and gang rivalries in 1960s Tulsa, featuring music from Jamestown Revival (Jonathan Clay and Zach Chance) and Justin Levine.
The Outsiders won for best musical at the Tonys.
‘The Outsiders’ Tickets
Stereophonic
Stereophonic centers around a fictional 1976 rock band on the edge of superstardom. Featuring original music from Arcade Fire’s Will Butler, Stereophonic follows the band as they record a new album and navigate “ensuing pressures” that could end in a “breakup or a breakthrough.”
The musical won five Tony Awards out of 13 nominations (tying with Hell’s Kitchen‘s nods).
‘Stereophonic’ Tickets
Merrily We Roll Along
The Stephen Sondheim musical is about two artists whose friendship falls apart just as their careers start to come together. The play starts at the end and takes viewers down memory lane with Daniel Radcliffe, Jonathan Groff and Lindsay Mendez as its stars.
Merrily We Roll Along took home four Tonys, including best revival musical.
‘Merrily We Roll Along’ Tickets
Suffs
Suffs is a musical about the women’s suffrages movement of the early 1900s. The cast includes Shaina Taub, Jenna Bainbridge, Kim Blanck, Nikki M. James, Tsilala Brock, Jenn Colella, Ally Bonino, Hannah Cruz and Nadia Dandashi.
The musical notched six Tony nominations and won two awards.
‘Suffs’ Tickets
Nick Jonas is prepping his return to Broadway in the spring of 2025 with a co-starring role in the revival of the musical The Last Five Years. According to The Hollywood Reporter Jonas is slated to co-star alongside Tony-winner Adrienne Warren (Shuffle Along, Tina) in the show, which will be directed by Tony nominee Whitney […]
Nas is working on adapting the beloved 1984 hip-hop movie Beat Street for Broadway. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the rapper is working to expand and create new material inspired by the original film’s soundtrack for the musical that he will co-produce. He will be collaborating on the musical stage adaptation with producer Arthur Baker […]